cyberculturesfandomcom-20200214-history
Jeff Warren's total notes
Back to Class notes 1/4 *Printing Press 1440 **Allowed for mass distribution of thoughts/ideas *Telegraph 1837 (Samuel Morse- Morse Code) **Allows for information in written language to be dispersed more immediately *1880’s-1890’s Tesla developed the fundamentals, but Marconi is attributed to modern day radio, then Thomas Edison from Ohio *Televisions in home as early as 1926, explosion of TV’s in 1950’s **Philo Farnsworth, Father of TV, 1925 1st prorotype *1957, Sputnik program launching satellites into space which would later aid internet *1946 contemporary computer *1972 machines with hard-drives and memory, IBM and HP, companies are patenting computer components *Commodity internet- T1 lines that are underground, tunnels we imagine the internet to be, actual infrastructure you tap into, 60’s, only linked major cities *December Article **WWW is different than commodity internet **Communication tool: selling, archive, museum **Xanadu project (dream): share literary files and give royalties **CERN, Berners Lee, nuclear scientists with literary scholars **1991 begin to proliferate, Netscape **Interface in 1967 **Social expansion is a euphemism *Cyberspace- electronic medium for communication, technological consciousness **Transfer of data **Way we imagine and process reality around us **World between virtual reality and RL *Video **Technology ethics **Technology to create life **Transcending biology **Dysfunction = RL + VL **Shape time and space **Groundbreaking **Relationships/ regulation of technology *Avatars **Twitter= outspoken, increase free speech **Reflection of identities in RL **Compartmentalized self **Entertainment, means of amusing ourselves **Sense of control of identities **Lose self control, sense of anonymity, losing social self (ethical being) **There is a schism here, we don’t necessarily live out scifi films, but the utopia or distopia hasn’t come to fruition yet *Cyberculture **Morals and values **Common practices **Social constructs and infrastructure, discourse **Tradition **Meaning **Defines a group of people, diverse **All man made morals, values, myths **Intersection with virtual space, imagining of alternative reality, variety of technologies *Benedikt 1992 Article **Popper’s World 1: objective material world, mountains, rivers, materiality **World 2: subjective world of our consciousness **World 3: structures we create, monuments, infrastructure **Cyberspace displaces world 3 (Benedikt) **Four threads: **#Mythologies, archetypes, telos **#Changing technology, continual making obsolete of former technologies **#Architecture of the heavenly city, humans always striving towards heavenly city **#Creating a new sense of logic, norms, and rules **Heavenly city: not really **Young men driving mythology and cyberspace: video games (killing), his-story, hero archetypes, violence, males opportunities with math and science, there aren’t many heroic images of femininity **Nomads who are always in touch (electronic tether): **All disciplines present in cyberspace: economic models, social, psychological, environmental studies *Virilio 1995 Article 1/5 *Convergence: coming together of technologies to disseminate information, Facebook communicating cell phone to grab photo, *Crowd sourcing: taking data from the crowd to develop algorithms to anticipate what you need, gathering anonymous information for future use *Collective intelligence: sum total of information held individually by the members of the group that can be accessed in response to a specific question, class Wiki, pushes past barriers of one persons ability to know something, knowledge can exceed personal knowledge, democratic practice *Survivor Spoiler **Adding a game to the game **Allowed to research and dig (history student) **Collective intelligence causing social harm…? *Riley Crane video (MIT balloon contest) *American idol **Vertical Integration: using advertising to integrate advertising at all the different levels of the media, deeper integration into the medium **Affective economics(p.61, Jenkins): condition product loyalty, 80/20 rule, emotional ties, **Participatory *Writing for the Web **Broad circulation ***Memes ***General diction **Clarity and brevity are privileged ***Low scroll tolerance **Chunking: small bits of information that aren’t paragraphs, digestable chunks **Keywords: allows reader to index/scan writing **Hyperlinks/references: builds ethos, **Usability: consider use value, video, photo, vulgarity 1/9 *Tron Movie **Interesting? ***Couldn’t tell the difference between user and program in cyberspace **Issues? ***Bad special effects ***Too much computer technology (critics) ***Time: VL and RL ***No flip flopping to RL **Consider Tron transmedia storytelling? ***Yes ***Additive comprehension gives new understanding ***Tron the game had a better narrative with the film that they couldn’t do with technology ***Does transmedia add or restrict storyline/imagination? ****Makes you more invested, time is then more fulfilling ****Vertical integration becomes part of pre-conscious, commitment *Non-permanence of technology, ephemeral (short-time) *Terms: **Media/medium- means of communicating a message across a platform, radio, TV, internet, chair **New media- any kind of media that involves interactivity, synonym of web 2.0 technology **Cyberculture- culture as a result of fast communication over multiple mediums, “artifacts that are created by the displacement of world 3 through technology (Richards)” **Convergence- assimilation of technologies across multiple platforms **Black box fallacy- idea that people believe all of our technology will be presented in a single black box, idea comes from convergence, but actually people are carrying around multiple black boxes **Collective intelligence- shared group intelligence, the sum of people’s minds, class Wiki page, collaborative thoughts, all of our intelligence together is greater than one’s individuals intelligence **Affective economics- new marketing theory based on the emotional drive to draw people in, emotional/deeper connection, taps into emotions **Participation/interactivity- participation is determined culturally and socially, interactivity relates to consumers and media **Participatory culture- the culture that develops around a form of entertainment **Crowd sourcing- collecting anonymous data from the crowd to come up with crowd habits, balloon challenge used crowd sourcing *Creep tree-house effect: technologies get used in the classroom and they become foreign and/or misappropriated *Cyberliteracy **Literacy studies: education, anthropology, economics, sociology, composition studies, linguistics -> relative, tool, performative, proficiency, partial, oral, written **Computer and Communication ***Ong: second orality language based on spoken and written communication ***Electronic communication shares characteristics with both speech and writing Naiomi Barron **What is cyberliteracy about? ***Electronic literacy (14) ***Understand how speed and time are compressed, reach (17) ***Understanding that cyberliteracy is not a neutral value (21), excluding population ***Computer literacy (but not just) (22) ***Consciousness (16), more than doing, it’s a way of thinking ***Availability to communicate (performative) (13) ***Going beyond being a “user” and becoming an “active participant” (28) ***Ability to not only use, but understand implications of actions **Compression of time and space are a result of speed, interactivity, reach, and anonymity ***Speed- casualness, redundancy, oralness, repetitiveness (information that resurfaces as new, scare emails) ***Reach- multiplicity, globalness, lack of gatekeeping, visual reach, community ***Anonymity- identity, gender/sex, flaming, autorship/ownership ***Interactivity- privacy, ecommerce and connections to consumers, access to inner circle, ability to talk back, two-way presence *Game Work: McAllister **A game you played where you learned something? 1/10 *'Aarseth’s Reading' **7 different layers to computer games: *##Hardware *##Program code *##Functionality (purposes its serves, abilities, capabilities) *##Game play- interaction between you and the game, the manipulative controlling *##Meaning- narrative *##Referentiality- link it to something you already know, schemata *##Socio-culture- representations of people, places, and things, what does the world look like *Should look at 2-4 of those elements when analyzing a game *Aesthetic analysis (pleasing sights and sounds) *#Game play- *#Game world- artistic representations at play, does it add anything to the aesthetic world *#Game rules- how rules are mapped out, pedagogically given, how do you acquire game rules *Can’t just play them by ourselves if we want to objectively analyze, we need to: *#Play the game *#Watch someone else play, observe others *#Research the game, put it in conversation *Four types of gamers: killers, socializers, explorers, achievers, cheaters *#Killers: aggressive players who enjoy annihilation, spoiling a game environment *#Socializers: enjoy the company, interactivity *#Achievers: play games to finish, win, finish quickly *#Explorers: get to new levels, find new things, open new worlds *#Cheaters: using cheat codes, finds short cuts *Political gaming 1/16 *''Cyber Racism (Daniels) **Cyberactivism: “the proliferation of the social movement organizarions that avail themselves of the Internet technologies to further their goals, which often include promoting a more inclusive democratic society” (p. 46) is a large umbrella term: underneath are cyber racism, cyberterrorism, cyberfeminism, hacktivism **Cyber racism (p. 4) ***Daniels focuses on more than just “official” social movements. She looks at white supremacy as an epistemology and a sociological frame. **Epistemology: relates to studies of “issues having to do with creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry” ***Knowledge>> “Justified True Belief,” which relies on some evidence. But in cyberspace evidence can be produced by virtually anyone. **White supremacy is an epistemology ***It is the belief in a racial hierarchy where “white” is the dominant racial identity ***Epistemology of white supremacy supports a notion of white and “whiteness,” born out of a perceived biological, national, social, and/or ideological affiliations ***Whiteness ****Unmarked, bodies of people that don’t see their own race ****Whiteness does not equal white supremacy ****Whiteness allows fro certain epistemologies of white supremacy to go unchecked ****Whiteness studies is not a study of how “whites are bad.” It I s the study of how power circulates through the practice of racialization. **It isn’t so much of an issue of recruitment but circulation of an epistemology of white supremacy and translocal whiteness, the U.S. becomes an exporter of “whiteness.” **Machado (Asian hate mail) ***“The boundaries of whiteness are quite flexible” (p.34) ***Assimilation of ''white racial frame- a framing of self as dominant **David Duke ***Stormfront.org ***Relies on heteronormative masculinity ***Openly white supremacy group ***2,500-4,000 hate websites originate in US **Gender and Stormfront ***Controlling sexuality via ****Heteronormative masculinity- normative expressions of male heterosexuality ****Control of women’s sexual identity *****Contradictions of female stormfront members *****Liberal feminism and male domination ***Therefore “Web 2.0 changes… the resistive read of prevailing white supremacist ideology” (p.84) ***“At the same time… white masculinity operates as a ‘ghost in the machine” (p.86) ***Abortion discussion and getting back at male counterparts 1/17 o Cloaked websites: sites disguised to actually be the opposite of what they appear to be § MLK website § GW Bush website § Hurricane Katrina website o Concerns for cloaked sites: § Internet based web research for students § Naiveté with internet research o Google bombing § Manipulating google’s algorithm to get searches to show towards the top · Rick Santorum bomb · Introduces doubt, associations § Clouding/coloring ideas, movements, ideologies o Race material § A lot of humor involved · How does the humor function? o Comedians were funny o Biggest difference is if something is clever or racist · Productive? o Responses trying to make a social criticism, but does trying to respond to something that is problematic with the same wording isn’t it the same framing o Racial framing and language, if we use the same language it gets messy they become intertwines. The counter strategies use the same racist dialogue which allows it to be a presence, which helps perpetuate the white supremacy framing · UCLA girl 1/18 *SOPA/PIPA Blackout Day **“Mainstream” Media (CNN, BBC, etc.) **Back channels (#SOPA, twitter, Facebook, comments, etc.) **Tech news **Actual sites of protest **Politician’s responses ***How is the issue being framed? (language used to describe SOPA/PIPA and blackout) ***Who is participating? (subset, types of people, bipartisan, etc.) 1/19 *Cyber-feminism **Gender: bigger spectrum than just men and women 1/23 *Did Facebook change the world? **Does cybercultrue inhibit or enhance democratic principles? Does cyberspace promote/inhibit democracy? ***Cyberpace reflects social constructs and is still influenced by physical world. Could be very democratic. *Cyberbullying **Intimidate, threaten, distress **Extension of what is going on in real life **Collective action **Prevalence higher, awareness lower **Facebook ***Recreating a hegemonic view of reality ***Indirectly paying for the service the 1/26 *Wrap-up day **Marshall McLuhan ***The medium is the message ***Orewellian ***Media was going to lead us to a place with big brother and a fascist media dictator 1964, controlling our thought processes ***''The Medium is the Message'' **Postman ***Anti-McLuhan ***Big brother isn’t controlling us, we are submitting to this, we want to dope ourselves, we are entertaining ourselves to the point we don’t care about the truth ***''Amusing Ourselves to Death'' **December ***Development of internet and WWW ***Xanadu, literary texts online ***Internet is a communication tool **Benedikt ***Three worlds are Carl Popper’s ****World 1: material world, mountains, rivers ****World 2: Ideas, consciousness ****World 3: Media acting on world 1, human created infrastructures, language, clothes ***What does it mean to have cyberspace, is it a space, what does it do? ***Cyberspace doesn’t replace world 3, it just displaces the items from world 3 ***4 major threads: ****Language, epic narrative, heroic, gender ****Mythology ****Math, logic ****Heavenly city, Benedikt is an urban planner, interested in the architecture of cyberspace, can we create a utopia? More ideal interaction/life? ***World 3: man-made, created by humans, politics, ideologies, social artifacts, culture, non-naturally occurring items ***What happens in world 3 is put into cyberspace: grows and morphs into its own trajectory separate from world 3 but still related by its roots (dating) **Virilio ***Everything is moving so fast: instantaneity which causes trauma ***We need to think about the speed and what it is doing to us in terms of time, space, and humanity **Jenkins ***Convergence culture: coming together of different forms of media content, they all interact bringing media and messages across mediums ***Black box fallacy: we will eventually work towards a single black box that has everything ***Vertical integration, spoilers, etc. **Pierre Levy ***Argues that knowledge communities, collective knowledge ***Must collectively know more than an individual components, must be able to be accessed at a later time ***This would ultimately lead to radical democracy where the rule of the people comes to fruition **Gurak: Cyberliteracy ***Having an awareness of what is happening and what it does to us as human beings, consciousness, active participant, more than knowing how to use ***Four major components of awareness, must grasp: speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity, compression of time and space and its consequences ***Never actually achieve cyberliteracy **Ken McAllister ***Computer game complex: school shootings, correlation between gaming and violence? ***Some say gaming makes us creative and participatory ***The truth is in the dialectic of both sides, it’s neither either or, but it is how the two arguments talk to one another ***Major argument: we need to study computer games, as much cultural force as literature and film ***Different forces they have on society: human interactions, economic force, pedagogical force (teaching and instruction) games inherently teach us something what is it teaching us, so many people engage in it we should know what it’s doing ***Different kind of mediums: push (TV) and pull mediums **Aarseth ***We can’t keep the same methodologies ****Play, watch others play, interview people involved ****All three levels of analysis ****Type of gamers: *****Killer, cheater, achiever, explorer, socializer ****We must take into account the type of gamer in regards to how they play, and how they change the artifact **Geocaching ***Interacting with cyberspace in RL ***Walking through world 1 from displaced information from world 3 ***Experience: complete reliance on technology ***Using this technology, so technology driven that we use it to pull us back into nature, using technology to get outside **A Rape in Cyberspace ***Events that happen online, if they have consequences in RL ***Multiple perspectives in what is happening in this space ***Rape, the mental violation that has the lasting affect ***MUD: multiple user domain, object oriented, dungeons and dragons online, 1st interactions on cyberspace **Jesse Daniels ***Epistemology: the study of justified belief/knowledge, how they circulate and emerge ***Problem of the internet and racism: deception, less gate-keeping structures, proliferation of speakers, cloaked websites, increases the reach, not the issue of recruitment, the problem is that the knowledge get re-ingrained into our society, no checks and balances behind the information, MLK.org **Hacktivism ***Political/social purpose behind it, not vandalism and defacement ***Works with people who have a deep understanding of technology **Cyberfeminism ***Looks at how gendered ideal and norms are displaced in to cyberspace, not just women. Just a historical tracing of feminism that allow this critique to take place ***Harraway ****We are already cyborgs, we must deal with that reality ****We need to acknowledge that we are cyborgs ****The feminist part is that we are already part biology and part machine, if we don’t take ownership of the machine part we will continue to be controlled. We need to think about these technologies and understand them, realizing how we can use those technologies to protect humans and our humanness ****Uses of technology that are ironic/blasphemous *****''Catfish'', meta-critique *****Arab spring revolts, shutting down the technology aided them once they got started ****If we use it to be ironic and blasphemous it will not make us innocent, there will be an outcome that has some kind of problem to it. Be careful. **Technology: Democracy or Utopia? ***Cyberspace increase democratic potentials of society? ****Broad reach of information, Arab spring ****Elections: more power of public online, participatory culture ***Limitations of cyberspace enacting democracy? ****Misinformation can circulate just as well ****Noisy space ****Unlevel playing field, more cyberliterate (cloacked websites) ****Distopia?: cyberbullying, ****Arab spring **Cyberspace/Cyberculture ***More push for regulation ***Documentary called connected **RL and VR ***Everything online is what we put there, there are pieces of RL in cyberspace, interplay between them ***Extension of social structures and relationships, virtual vs. physical ***We create who we believe ourselves to be in cyberspace ***Richards: they are interrelated ***We influence cyberspace and cyberspace influences us, mutual relationship